But the thing is, regardless of whether or not these criminals care, the fact that you are required to have a concealed weapons permit allows the cops to hold them on something if they are caught with an illegal firearm, even if they have yet to commit a crime.
If someone has "yet to commit a crime" then what gives you the right to arrest them for exercising a constitutionally protected right? If they've already got a criminal history then it's already illegal for them to possess a firearm and they could be arrested on the spot. Your argument in favor of licensing concealed carry does not fly.
I rather prefer the Vermont model -- any law abiding citizen can purchase a firearm and carry it openly or concealed. No permit required.
How many times do people argue and physically fight?
Not very often in the grand scheme of things. Most human conflicts are resolved with a few rude gestures and an insult or two. Very few escalate to physical violence and of those even fewer escalate to the use of deadly force.
It may not be so hard to get so pissed off you pull out your gun and start shooting before you have time to think about what you're doing.
If that's your belief then why do we allow people to have drivers licenses? "It may not be so hard to get so pissed off that you gun the gas and run someone off the road before you have time to think about what you're doing." Do you not see the folly in that line of reasoning? Normal human beings do not resort to deadly force when they get cut off in traffic/treated badly by customer service/etc, etc.
Think about all the fights you see in HS, College, Bars, Sports events! Try giving all those people guns and then see what happens.
Who needs guns? If people were willing to resort to deadly force as quickly as you claim then why aren't rocks being picked up and used in those fights? Why aren't more beer bottles being broken over heads? Why aren't more people being run down in the parking lot?
I find your lack of faith in humanity to be disappointing.
Yes, sufficiently motivated people can just as easily hurt someone with knives, bottles or fists
What makes you think that people who aren't 'sufficiently motivated' are capable of murder in the first place?
This may come as a surprise but the overwhelming majority of human beings are not capable of pointing a firearm at another human being and pulling the trigger. If people just "snapped" and resorted to deadly force over minor transgressions then why don't we see people being run down in the streets on a regular basis? A car is at least as deadly as a firearm and people operate them every single day. Why aren't more people snapping and using them to kill?
The vast majority of human beings are capable of walking away from a bad situation before it escalates to deadly force. Hell, the vast majority are capable of walking away before it even escalates to a common fist fight. Most human conflicts resemble those in the animal kingdom -- a whole lot of posturing (yelling, screaming, rude gestures, etc) that isn't allowed to get out of control, lest the participants wind up serious injuries (animal kingdom) or in jail (human kingdom).
Do you trust yourself enough not to run someone off the road who just cut you off and flipped you the bird? If the answer is yes then you should trust yourself enough to carry a gun. If the answer is no then you need to seek professional help. The overwhelming majority of people are going to answer "yes" to that question. You don't have the right to penalize us because of the asshats that answer "no".
If you are being robbed at gunpoint on the street, unless you plan to strap a quick draw holster to your leg you will never even have a chance to use your weapon
Ever taken a self-defense class? Go take one and educate yourself. There are lots of things you can do when faced with an armed robber -- chief among them would have been to pay attention to your surroundings so your first indication of the robbery wasn't the gun in your face.
There is NO REASON for the average person to carry a concealed weapon (trained and monitored security personnel excepted of course). In fact it creates an even more dangerous environment.
Who the hell are you to tell someone else that they have NO REASON to do anything or everything? And I like how you qualify that with "average person". You don't get to play that game -- either everybody has the right to carry a firearm or nobody does (and this would include off-duty police officers too). Ever heard of equal protection? We don't have a class system in this country wherein certain people get rights not afforded to the remaining population.
Plaxico Burris (the football player who shot himself in the leg at a nightclub last year), had a license to carry his gun in Florida. What if he shot someone else's leg? Or their head?
Plaxico Burris was a fucking moron who carried his handgun in the waistband of his sweatpants while drinking. He deserves to be punished as harshly as possible for his stupidity but holding him up as an argument for why the rest of us shouldn't be able to carry firearms is absurd. If he's your standard bearer then the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to have drivers licenses or checking accounts either.
Please understand that I am not against guns, I am just against non-law enforcement/security personnel carrying handguns (or assault rifles for that matter), around in public.
No, your just against people being able to use them for their intended purpose. That's so much better.
There are nonlethal means of defending one's self, these days
If you are relying on a 'non-lethal' response to lethal force being used against you then I hope your life insurance is paid up and your affairs are in order.....
Also, just FYI, the proper term is "less than lethal". Tasers, bean-bag guns and pepper spray can and do kill from time to time.
I think you missed the part where he said "and the terrible worry about peacefully minded citizens taking legal means to protect themselves from assault, rape, robbery, etc. will never again burden you.":)
If guns are more prevalent, then chances are that you're more likely to have one yourself, so if you fly off the handle, you can use your own in the committing of the crime.
This is such a tired old argument that I'm growing weary of dispelling it. Repeat after me: Normal human beings do not "fly off the handle" and murder other human beings. If they did then we'd also have to outlaw cars (hint: it's much easier to kill someone by running them over than by shooting them), kitchen knives, etc.
We've all been angry at one point in our lifetimes or another. How many of us have allowed the situation to escalate to physical violence? Of those that do how many have allowed it to escalate further to deadly physical violence? Most people are capable of walking away without throwing punches. Most of the ones who aren't are capable of throwing a punch without picking up a rock/knife/gun. The percentage of people who "fly off the handle" and resort to murder is so exceedingly small that I'd worry more about being struck by lightning than running across someone who is going to murder me because I cut him off in traffic.
Have you ever taken a self-defense class? Ever talked to anybody that has a concealed carry permit? Most self-defense classes spend at least as much time on deescalation techniques as they do on fighting techniques. Most concealed carry holders would tell you that having that firearm on their waist makes them less likely to pick fights over trivial bullshit.
I know it's changed my attitude and outlook on life. I don't flip people off on the roadways when they cut me off/tailgate me any longer -- it's simply not worth provoking a situation that may escalate to violence. As far as I'm concerned everybody should carry a firearm. The vast majority of us would be a lot more polite towards each other and the small minority of psychopaths would have to face the fact that their next victim is going to have the ability to fight back.
And yes, while people did bad things before there were guns, it's easier to use a gun than be skilled with a knife or have the brute strength to use a club (e.g. baseball bad, tire iron, etc.)
No, actually it's not "easier" to use a gun to take a human life than any other instrument. Have you ever fired a gun? Ever fired one under a stressful situation when the adrenaline is pumping? Ever fired one at someone who is trying to take it away from you and/or run away? Here's one hint: If your normal group is 2" across when standing at the range shooting at paper targets it's going to be 12" across when the adrenaline is pumping and you are fighting for your life.
Here's another hint: A normal human being does not have the capacity to point a gun at another and pull the trigger unless his or her life is in mortal danger. The small minority of people that can commit murder are so fucked up in the head that I doubt they'd have any issue with using a knife, baseball bat or even their bare hands to do the job instead.
But the Philippines and Poland (and others after them) have shown you can win independence without the necessity of resorting to violence (force?).
How amazingly naive you are. If it wasn't for violence the Polish people wouldn't even exist today. Go read about Generalplan Ost and tell me how you can defeat such evil without resorting to violence.
that the US accepts their conditions and concludes a formal end to the Korean Wa
Umm, you can't even pay attention to history that's less than a decade or two old, can you? Bill Clinton concluded agreements with North Korea. They then went back on those agreements. How the hell do you conclude an agreement with a nation that refuses to honor them?
They are not - ever - going to nuke the US for the same reason that the USSR never nuked the US (despite being far better armed than the DPRK will ever be). The only circumstance in which it could make sense would be in response to a first strike by the US.
Did you ignore everything I said about countries not always being rational when it comes time to decide whether or not they want to go to war?
They don't want other states to acquire nukes - in general - because that's a strategic threat to US military hegemony
Actually it's a strategic threat to the entire world. That's the whole reason the NPT was willingly entered into by the vast majority of the civilized nations on this rock. If North Korea arms itself with a creditable nuclear force then Japan is going to go nuclear. If Japan goes nuclear then China is going to get pissed off and start building more and better weapons systems. If that happens Japan (and Taiwan, Australia, Russia, etc) will have to accelerate her own arms build up. There are many ways such a regional arms race could end but few of them are good.
The Koreans have nukes but not yet a credible strategic rocket force, so they are still being brow-beaten (irrespective of administrations).
They wouldn't be getting 'brow-beaten' if they weren't oppressing their people and regularly threatening to turn their neighbors into a lake of fire.
China would be extremely pissed off in particular, and the US is now enormously dependent on China
No more so than they are on us. I wish people would at least learn the facts of the situation before they repeat this line. The Chinese-American relationship is one of mutual dependence.
In the Netherlands carrying personal ID is mandatory. So I can't keep my passport in a safe deposit box. Sadly.
Sounds like you need to vote your government out of power and elect some people that care about liberty more than they care about the illusion of security. Failing that, perhaps you need to refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants?
When you join a militia and keep your guns for that, you'll have a point.
You haven't been paying attention to recent Supreme Court precedent have you? That argument doesn't fly any longer. You'll have to find another one.
but putting up with danger from people willing to surrender their rights for the illusion of safety may just be part of the price we pay for freedom
Fixed that for you:)
True, there are other countries that provide freedom (sometimes beyond what's offered here in the US) without the epidemic of gun violence we face because guns
We do have a violence problem in this country. Why are you trying to link it to firearms? Shouldn't the fact that some criminal scumbag is willing to use deadly force upon another human being be more indicative of a problem with him and not with the tool he is using for his dastardly deed? I don't think you make a connection between violence and firearm ownership. There are countries that virtually outlaw civilian firearm ownership that have much higher violent crime rates than the US does. Likewise, there are also countries that have comparatively lax firearm ownership laws that have much less violence than we do.
You can see the same trend replicated right here in the states too. Chicago has strict gun laws and lots of violent crime. Vermont has few gun laws (any non-felon can buy a handgun and carry it openly or concealed without needing a permit) and almost no gun violence. Doesn't that suggest to you that there are other factors driving criminal violence than the availability of firearms?
And I do completely support the right to have hunting rifles.
You do realize that hunting rifles are usually much more powerful than the "assault rifles" that get the gun control crowd all worked up, right? Most common hunting calibers will go through police body armor like a hot knife through butter. Most handgun rounds are easily stopped by the same body armor. Perhaps we need to outlaw hunting rifles and give everybody a handgun?
if you sign up for selective service (which you are required to...)
Bzzt, no selective service registration is required. From Title 10, Section 311 of the US Code:
The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
It's the process by which the rights guaranteed to us by the Federal Constitution are held to also apply to the state. The original theory behind the Constitution was that it only applied to the actions of the Federal Government and thus a state was free to establish a state religion, infringe on your freedom of speech/right to keep and bear arms, etc.
This was the accepted view until the passage of the 14th amendment, part of which reads, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" After the 14th amendment passed SCOTUS started holding that various parts of the Bill of Rights (the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments in particular) applied to the states as well. They haven't yet held that the 2nd amendment applies but it's only a matter of time before they do -- a plain reading of the 14th and 2nd amendments doesn't leave much wiggle room for the states to infringe on your right to keep and bear arms.
but I know that you carry a gun, that may dissuade me from assaulting you. I'm not going to say with 100% certainty that it will - that would be hyperbole. I will, however, assert that it would change a lot of people's minds.
If the knowledge that I have the gun doesn't dissuade you then the 230 grain.45 caliber slugs entering your body at 800 feet per second probably will.
"God created man, Sam Colt made them equal." A friend of mine was nearly raped a several years ago. The attempted rapist had more than 12 inches and 150 pounds on her. She stood absolutely no chance at overpowering him or successfully running away. So why was it an attempted rape and not an actual rape? She had a.38 special with her.
Sad but true. My favorite is the Hollywood types that rant about the evils of firearm ownership while being protected by armed bodyguards. Fucking hypocrites.
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
I seem to recall that putting it in a microwave on the "defrost" setting for a minute or so had the same effect, without destroying the passport itself.
Think again. I tried this with a RFID'ed credit card just to see what would happen and the results were rather spectacular. The RFID chip was destroyed in under a second but generated a shower of sparks that melted a large portion of the credit card and rendered it completely unusable. Of course that was the point -- I'd made the credit card company send me a card without a chip in it -- but I'm guessing you don't want to try and use a scorched and carbonized passport.......
Finding this Slashdot article in your browser cache, and you being in possession of a disabled RFID passport might be enough probable cause to dig deeper and find more. And more.
It would take a bit more than a disabled RFID chip to get probable cause to search your computer. That said, I wouldn't try the hammer or the microwave with my passport. I'd be surprised if there isn't a law on the books about mutilating those types of documents. It's easy enough to keep the thing in a foil pouch until you need to use it -- and if I'm not traveling out of the country my passport lives in a safe deposit box anyway.
Blatantly true, at least in parts of the United States
Fixed that for you. If you think you can get a carry permit in New York City/San Francisco/Chicago as a law abiding American citizen think again. The only way that happens is if you are rich and have political connections. The rest of us poor slobs don't have the right to defend ourselves if we are unlucky enough to live in a part of the country run by the anti-gun zealots.
This will eventually change when the 2nd amendment is incorporated against the states but it doesn't change the fact that right now you effectively have no right to keep and bear arms if you live in the wrong part of the country.
I don't think that it is the ISP's job to filter what goes on over their networks except to the extent that they may need to throttle some users who flood the pipes during peak usage hours.
I don't even agree with throttling -- at least with the way it tends to be implemented. I don't see an issue with traffic shaping that puts p2p/ftp/nntp/etc at the bottom of the packet queue but if there's so much as a kilobit of free bandwidth it's stupid to throttle someone down just because it's "peak hours"
My own traffic shaping set up at the office looks something like this:
0) VOIP
1) Business related VPN activity
2) TCP ACKs and SYNs, DNS requests, NTP packets
3) Small ssh packets (only small ones so scp/sftp transfers don't get priority -- you want interactive traffic prioritized, not bulk transfers)
4) Web browsing/downloads from our administrative staff
5) Web browsing/downloads from other staff
6) Web browsing/downloads from guest users of the network
7) UDP packets relating to p2p (i.e: DHT trackers)
8) TCP packets relating to p2p (i.e: bittorrent)
Items #7 and #8 can get the full bandwidth of our pipe unless something higher up in the list needs to use it. Each item gets a guaranteed minimum amount of bandwidth. Setups similar to this seem perfectly fair to me -- blanket throttling of traffic just because it's p2p or not bound for the ISPs network does not.
The idea is that they'd have a harder time winding up in the hands of "big business" (whatever that means.... you should have just said special interests because "big business" is not the only or even the biggest problem) if they aren't needing to perpetually raise funds for re-election.
You mean like the "good cause" that Colin Powell had to believe that Saddam's WMD were a threat?
I'm sorry but I can't take you seriously if you are going to insist on turning this into a political rant about the prior administration. My point was that if we had good cause to believe that North Korea was about to launch a nuclear strike on American soil (or that of any of our allies for that matter) we'd be perfectly justified in attacking them first. If you are going to question that "good cause" when it hasn't even happened because you are still bitter about the GWB administration then I think you need to step back and gain some perspective.
That would be the utmost folly, and people who think it might come to pass (because Kim Jong-Il is "mad") are IMHO victims of their own government's war propaganda.
People who think we shouldn't take steps to prepare for that possibility and to defend our citizens are delusional flower children with no concept of how the world really works. Governments don't always make logical and rational decisions. Was it rational for the Japanese to go to war with their largest trading partner whom had nine times their GDP, twice their population and the resources with which to utterly crush them? Was it logical for Argentina to start a war they couldn't win with the British? Was it logical for the Arab states to try and defeat Israel on the battlefield?
I hope to god that you are right and Kim Jong-Il is a rational man but it would be extremely stupid not to take steps to defend ourselves should he or those around him prove to be batshit insane.
But in fact the choice isn't between those two options - in fact, option B is a ludicrous scenario. The choice is actually between pissing off the rest of the world and NOT pissing off the rest of the world.
It's a ludicrous scenario right now. In a week, month or year it might not be. I'm not advocating that we attack North Korea. I'm just advocating that we prepare for the possibility and take steps (i.e: continue to invest in and deploy our missile defense system while deploying offensive assets to the Pacific that can destroy the North Korean nuclear capability should the need arise) to defend ourselves from them. Or would you rather wait until they have the capability to vaporize Los Angeles before we take steps to make it harder for them to do so?
No I don't think this is true... at least not without taking signifant losses in retalation, at least to US troops stationed in the South.
Then you don't understand how modern military campaigns are conducted or what the respective capabilities of the two forces are. In any event, the choice is between Honolulu being on the front lines and our troops in South Korea being on the front lines is not a hard one to make.
There's also another matter that neither of us have mentioned in this discussion. The fact that North Korea has a history of sharing their weapons technology with other rouge nations (Pakistan and Burma) and stateless actors. As far as I'm concerned we should ignore their bluster about "we'll consider that an act of war" and shut down the little bit of trade they have remaining with the rest of the world. If they are as rational as you seem to think they are then what do we have to lose? Surely they won't start a war they can't win over a ship being boarded, will they?
If the judge ordered Chap. 7 Darl would spend the rest of his life telling everyone how he was cheated out of his litigation fortune and chance to save the company
Except that he wouldn't be cheated out of his litigation fortune. If the litigation results in a settlement larger than the debts that SCO owes to it's creditors than the Chapter 7 wouldn't be carried to conclusion and SCO could remain in business as a viable enterprise. If the settlement is smaller than those debts than SCO wasn't going to stay in business anyway.
The US Trustee would have no interest in shutting down the litigation because whatever money SCO gains from it would be used to pay back their creditors. Thus I don't see how Darl could claim that he was "cheated" out of anything if they were forced into a Chapter 7.
The problem with Gerrymandering or redistricting is that the basic concepts behind it is real and needed. It's just that it appears to have been hijacked and given a bad name. Populations grow, people move, and so on. This presents a problem every ten years when we count the population in which one congressional district will end up disproportionally representing people over another. It's back to the old taxation without representation ordeal. If district A now has 10 times as many people and district B now has less people, then the people in A are under represented and the people in B are over represented. Changing district borders around is the way to deal with it but there is no way to do so without appearing to be acting in self interests.
Oh, I know that it's needed and that you could never precisely follow existing political lines. I would just follow them as closely as possible so that the resulting districts were drawn with the intent of keeping communities together and making sure that each district is roughly the same size in population.
When districts wind up looking like this something is wrong. That's my Congressional district. My home town (Binghamton) has nothing in common with the downstate cities that we are lumped in with. My own county winds up being divided to suit a partisan agenda because we lack the political capital to keep our community intact and you wind up seeing stupid nonsense like the thin "corridor" that stretches up to Ithaca solely so they can throw more Democrats into the district to make it impossible for Hinchey to lose re-election.
There's just something wrong when the politician gets to pick his voters. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?
I generally push the idea that it isn't the duty of our elected leaders to do what the people want. Their duty is to their office and what it covers which also covers but isn't limited to the people or what the people want.
I feel the same way, particularly with regards to the US Senate. Were it up to me we would repeal the 17th amendment.
As for the third parties. Sadly this will never be a reality because they do not want it to be. There are a few problems they refuse to tackle. One is where they main body of ideas are so similar to existing party lines that it is impossible to tell the differences except for a small few of them. Then when the major parties see the popularity of them, they simple adopt it as their own leaving the third party with no credit for the ideas. The second is that the major parties have the grass roots infrastructure in place from the local community up to the higher levels of politics. The third parties seem to not be interested in playing that role. This present a very uncomfortable view that people who are unfamiliar with the parties will not vote for them. They instead will vote for who they are comfortable with, the democrats or republicans who govern their country board or state governments. They know where the differences are with them on a local level which isn't always left and right.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I do get a kick out of political parties that can't even count one mayor of a decent sized city trying to run for President. Of course part of that is because of our electoral system and I honestly don't know how I'd do that any differently. If nothing else I'd abolish gerrymandering and draw up Congressional districts based on existing political lines (towns/cities/counties/etc), keeping them all as close together as possible in population.
At the very least that would make sure that local issues are better represented in the Congress and give us a larger number of competitive house races. You'll always have some districts (anything in NYC or San Francisco for the left, anything in the plains states/rural areas of the south for the right) that are going to tilt heavily to one side or another but drawing haphazard districts with 2 mile wide corridors that stretch across entire states in order to do it on purpose is an insult to the notion of a Representative Republic.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what some poeple say about slashdot.
At least slashdot gives loud mouthed assholes like me more than 140 characters to express our opinions that nobody else cares about ;)
But the thing is, regardless of whether or not these criminals care, the fact that you are required to have a concealed weapons permit allows the cops to hold them on something if they are caught with an illegal firearm, even if they have yet to commit a crime.
If someone has "yet to commit a crime" then what gives you the right to arrest them for exercising a constitutionally protected right? If they've already got a criminal history then it's already illegal for them to possess a firearm and they could be arrested on the spot. Your argument in favor of licensing concealed carry does not fly.
I rather prefer the Vermont model -- any law abiding citizen can purchase a firearm and carry it openly or concealed. No permit required.
How many times do people argue and physically fight?
Not very often in the grand scheme of things. Most human conflicts are resolved with a few rude gestures and an insult or two. Very few escalate to physical violence and of those even fewer escalate to the use of deadly force.
It may not be so hard to get so pissed off you pull out your gun and start shooting before you have time to think about what you're doing.
If that's your belief then why do we allow people to have drivers licenses? "It may not be so hard to get so pissed off that you gun the gas and run someone off the road before you have time to think about what you're doing." Do you not see the folly in that line of reasoning? Normal human beings do not resort to deadly force when they get cut off in traffic/treated badly by customer service/etc, etc.
Think about all the fights you see in HS, College, Bars, Sports events! Try giving all those people guns and then see what happens.
Who needs guns? If people were willing to resort to deadly force as quickly as you claim then why aren't rocks being picked up and used in those fights? Why aren't more beer bottles being broken over heads? Why aren't more people being run down in the parking lot?
I find your lack of faith in humanity to be disappointing.
Yes, sufficiently motivated people can just as easily hurt someone with knives, bottles or fists
What makes you think that people who aren't 'sufficiently motivated' are capable of murder in the first place?
This may come as a surprise but the overwhelming majority of human beings are not capable of pointing a firearm at another human being and pulling the trigger. If people just "snapped" and resorted to deadly force over minor transgressions then why don't we see people being run down in the streets on a regular basis? A car is at least as deadly as a firearm and people operate them every single day. Why aren't more people snapping and using them to kill?
The vast majority of human beings are capable of walking away from a bad situation before it escalates to deadly force. Hell, the vast majority are capable of walking away before it even escalates to a common fist fight. Most human conflicts resemble those in the animal kingdom -- a whole lot of posturing (yelling, screaming, rude gestures, etc) that isn't allowed to get out of control, lest the participants wind up serious injuries (animal kingdom) or in jail (human kingdom).
Do you trust yourself enough not to run someone off the road who just cut you off and flipped you the bird? If the answer is yes then you should trust yourself enough to carry a gun. If the answer is no then you need to seek professional help. The overwhelming majority of people are going to answer "yes" to that question. You don't have the right to penalize us because of the asshats that answer "no".
If you are being robbed at gunpoint on the street, unless you plan to strap a quick draw holster to your leg you will never even have a chance to use your weapon
Ever taken a self-defense class? Go take one and educate yourself. There are lots of things you can do when faced with an armed robber -- chief among them would have been to pay attention to your surroundings so your first indication of the robbery wasn't the gun in your face.
There is NO REASON for the average person to carry a concealed weapon (trained and monitored security personnel excepted of course). In fact it creates an even more dangerous environment.
Who the hell are you to tell someone else that they have NO REASON to do anything or everything? And I like how you qualify that with "average person". You don't get to play that game -- either everybody has the right to carry a firearm or nobody does (and this would include off-duty police officers too). Ever heard of equal protection? We don't have a class system in this country wherein certain people get rights not afforded to the remaining population.
Plaxico Burris (the football player who shot himself in the leg at a nightclub last year), had a license to carry his gun in Florida. What if he shot someone else's leg? Or their head?
Plaxico Burris was a fucking moron who carried his handgun in the waistband of his sweatpants while drinking. He deserves to be punished as harshly as possible for his stupidity but holding him up as an argument for why the rest of us shouldn't be able to carry firearms is absurd. If he's your standard bearer then the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to have drivers licenses or checking accounts either.
Please understand that I am not against guns, I am just against non-law enforcement/security personnel carrying handguns (or assault rifles for that matter), around in public.
No, your just against people being able to use them for their intended purpose. That's so much better.
There are nonlethal means of defending one's self, these days
If you are relying on a 'non-lethal' response to lethal force being used against you then I hope your life insurance is paid up and your affairs are in order.....
Also, just FYI, the proper term is "less than lethal". Tasers, bean-bag guns and pepper spray can and do kill from time to time.
I think you missed the part where he said "and the terrible worry about peacefully minded citizens taking legal means to protect themselves from assault, rape, robbery, etc. will never again burden you." :)
If guns are more prevalent, then chances are that you're more likely to have one yourself, so if you fly off the handle, you can use your own in the committing of the crime.
This is such a tired old argument that I'm growing weary of dispelling it. Repeat after me: Normal human beings do not "fly off the handle" and murder other human beings. If they did then we'd also have to outlaw cars (hint: it's much easier to kill someone by running them over than by shooting them), kitchen knives, etc.
We've all been angry at one point in our lifetimes or another. How many of us have allowed the situation to escalate to physical violence? Of those that do how many have allowed it to escalate further to deadly physical violence? Most people are capable of walking away without throwing punches. Most of the ones who aren't are capable of throwing a punch without picking up a rock/knife/gun. The percentage of people who "fly off the handle" and resort to murder is so exceedingly small that I'd worry more about being struck by lightning than running across someone who is going to murder me because I cut him off in traffic.
Have you ever taken a self-defense class? Ever talked to anybody that has a concealed carry permit? Most self-defense classes spend at least as much time on deescalation techniques as they do on fighting techniques. Most concealed carry holders would tell you that having that firearm on their waist makes them less likely to pick fights over trivial bullshit.
I know it's changed my attitude and outlook on life. I don't flip people off on the roadways when they cut me off/tailgate me any longer -- it's simply not worth provoking a situation that may escalate to violence. As far as I'm concerned everybody should carry a firearm. The vast majority of us would be a lot more polite towards each other and the small minority of psychopaths would have to face the fact that their next victim is going to have the ability to fight back.
And yes, while people did bad things before there were guns, it's easier to use a gun than be skilled with a knife or have the brute strength to use a club (e.g. baseball bad, tire iron, etc.)
No, actually it's not "easier" to use a gun to take a human life than any other instrument. Have you ever fired a gun? Ever fired one under a stressful situation when the adrenaline is pumping? Ever fired one at someone who is trying to take it away from you and/or run away? Here's one hint: If your normal group is 2" across when standing at the range shooting at paper targets it's going to be 12" across when the adrenaline is pumping and you are fighting for your life.
Here's another hint: A normal human being does not have the capacity to point a gun at another and pull the trigger unless his or her life is in mortal danger. The small minority of people that can commit murder are so fucked up in the head that I doubt they'd have any issue with using a knife, baseball bat or even their bare hands to do the job instead.
But the Philippines and Poland (and others after them) have shown you can win independence without the necessity of resorting to violence (force?).
How amazingly naive you are. If it wasn't for violence the Polish people wouldn't even exist today. Go read about Generalplan Ost and tell me how you can defeat such evil without resorting to violence.
Oh, and since I missed one:
that the US accepts their conditions and concludes a formal end to the Korean Wa
Umm, you can't even pay attention to history that's less than a decade or two old, can you? Bill Clinton concluded agreements with North Korea. They then went back on those agreements. How the hell do you conclude an agreement with a nation that refuses to honor them?
They are not - ever - going to nuke the US for the same reason that the USSR never nuked the US (despite being far better armed than the DPRK will ever be). The only circumstance in which it could make sense would be in response to a first strike by the US.
Did you ignore everything I said about countries not always being rational when it comes time to decide whether or not they want to go to war?
They don't want other states to acquire nukes - in general - because that's a strategic threat to US military hegemony
Actually it's a strategic threat to the entire world. That's the whole reason the NPT was willingly entered into by the vast majority of the civilized nations on this rock. If North Korea arms itself with a creditable nuclear force then Japan is going to go nuclear. If Japan goes nuclear then China is going to get pissed off and start building more and better weapons systems. If that happens Japan (and Taiwan, Australia, Russia, etc) will have to accelerate her own arms build up. There are many ways such a regional arms race could end but few of them are good.
The Koreans have nukes but not yet a credible strategic rocket force, so they are still being brow-beaten (irrespective of administrations).
They wouldn't be getting 'brow-beaten' if they weren't oppressing their people and regularly threatening to turn their neighbors into a lake of fire.
China would be extremely pissed off in particular, and the US is now enormously dependent on China
No more so than they are on us. I wish people would at least learn the facts of the situation before they repeat this line. The Chinese-American relationship is one of mutual dependence.
In the Netherlands carrying personal ID is mandatory. So I can't keep my passport in a safe deposit box. Sadly.
Sounds like you need to vote your government out of power and elect some people that care about liberty more than they care about the illusion of security. Failing that, perhaps you need to refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants?
When you join a militia and keep your guns for that, you'll have a point.
You haven't been paying attention to recent Supreme Court precedent have you? That argument doesn't fly any longer. You'll have to find another one.
but putting up with danger from people willing to surrender their rights for the illusion of safety may just be part of the price we pay for freedom
Fixed that for you :)
True, there are other countries that provide freedom (sometimes beyond what's offered here in the US) without the epidemic of gun violence we face because guns
We do have a violence problem in this country. Why are you trying to link it to firearms? Shouldn't the fact that some criminal scumbag is willing to use deadly force upon another human being be more indicative of a problem with him and not with the tool he is using for his dastardly deed? I don't think you make a connection between violence and firearm ownership. There are countries that virtually outlaw civilian firearm ownership that have much higher violent crime rates than the US does. Likewise, there are also countries that have comparatively lax firearm ownership laws that have much less violence than we do.
You can see the same trend replicated right here in the states too. Chicago has strict gun laws and lots of violent crime. Vermont has few gun laws (any non-felon can buy a handgun and carry it openly or concealed without needing a permit) and almost no gun violence. Doesn't that suggest to you that there are other factors driving criminal violence than the availability of firearms?
And I do completely support the right to have hunting rifles.
You do realize that hunting rifles are usually much more powerful than the "assault rifles" that get the gun control crowd all worked up, right? Most common hunting calibers will go through police body armor like a hot knife through butter. Most handgun rounds are easily stopped by the same body armor. Perhaps we need to outlaw hunting rifles and give everybody a handgun?
if you sign up for selective service (which you are required to...)
Bzzt, no selective service registration is required. From Title 10, Section 311 of the US Code:
The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
It's the process by which the rights guaranteed to us by the Federal Constitution are held to also apply to the state. The original theory behind the Constitution was that it only applied to the actions of the Federal Government and thus a state was free to establish a state religion, infringe on your freedom of speech/right to keep and bear arms, etc.
This was the accepted view until the passage of the 14th amendment, part of which reads, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" After the 14th amendment passed SCOTUS started holding that various parts of the Bill of Rights (the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments in particular) applied to the states as well. They haven't yet held that the 2nd amendment applies but it's only a matter of time before they do -- a plain reading of the 14th and 2nd amendments doesn't leave much wiggle room for the states to infringe on your right to keep and bear arms.
but I know that you carry a gun, that may dissuade me from assaulting you. I'm not going to say with 100% certainty that it will - that would be hyperbole. I will, however, assert that it would change a lot of people's minds.
If the knowledge that I have the gun doesn't dissuade you then the 230 grain .45 caliber slugs entering your body at 800 feet per second probably will.
"God created man, Sam Colt made them equal." A friend of mine was nearly raped a several years ago. The attempted rapist had more than 12 inches and 150 pounds on her. She stood absolutely no chance at overpowering him or successfully running away. So why was it an attempted rape and not an actual rape? She had a .38 special with her.
Provide a link or it didn't happen.
Wait ten minutes and then check Wikipedia ;)
Sad but true. My favorite is the Hollywood types that rant about the evils of firearm ownership while being protected by armed bodyguards. Fucking hypocrites.
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
I seem to recall that putting it in a microwave on the "defrost" setting for a minute or so had the same effect, without destroying the passport itself.
Think again. I tried this with a RFID'ed credit card just to see what would happen and the results were rather spectacular. The RFID chip was destroyed in under a second but generated a shower of sparks that melted a large portion of the credit card and rendered it completely unusable. Of course that was the point -- I'd made the credit card company send me a card without a chip in it -- but I'm guessing you don't want to try and use a scorched and carbonized passport.......
Finding this Slashdot article in your browser cache, and you being in possession of a disabled RFID passport might be enough probable cause to dig deeper and find more. And more.
It would take a bit more than a disabled RFID chip to get probable cause to search your computer. That said, I wouldn't try the hammer or the microwave with my passport. I'd be surprised if there isn't a law on the books about mutilating those types of documents. It's easy enough to keep the thing in a foil pouch until you need to use it -- and if I'm not traveling out of the country my passport lives in a safe deposit box anyway.
Blatantly true, at least in parts of the United States
Fixed that for you. If you think you can get a carry permit in New York City/San Francisco/Chicago as a law abiding American citizen think again. The only way that happens is if you are rich and have political connections. The rest of us poor slobs don't have the right to defend ourselves if we are unlucky enough to live in a part of the country run by the anti-gun zealots.
This will eventually change when the 2nd amendment is incorporated against the states but it doesn't change the fact that right now you effectively have no right to keep and bear arms if you live in the wrong part of the country.
I don't think that it is the ISP's job to filter what goes on over their networks except to the extent that they may need to throttle some users who flood the pipes during peak usage hours.
I don't even agree with throttling -- at least with the way it tends to be implemented. I don't see an issue with traffic shaping that puts p2p/ftp/nntp/etc at the bottom of the packet queue but if there's so much as a kilobit of free bandwidth it's stupid to throttle someone down just because it's "peak hours"
My own traffic shaping set up at the office looks something like this:
0) VOIP
1) Business related VPN activity
2) TCP ACKs and SYNs, DNS requests, NTP packets
3) Small ssh packets (only small ones so scp/sftp transfers don't get priority -- you want interactive traffic prioritized, not bulk transfers)
4) Web browsing/downloads from our administrative staff
5) Web browsing/downloads from other staff
6) Web browsing/downloads from guest users of the network
7) UDP packets relating to p2p (i.e: DHT trackers)
8) TCP packets relating to p2p (i.e: bittorrent)
Items #7 and #8 can get the full bandwidth of our pipe unless something higher up in the list needs to use it. Each item gets a guaranteed minimum amount of bandwidth. Setups similar to this seem perfectly fair to me -- blanket throttling of traffic just because it's p2p or not bound for the ISPs network does not.
The idea is that they'd have a harder time winding up in the hands of "big business" (whatever that means.... you should have just said special interests because "big business" is not the only or even the biggest problem) if they aren't needing to perpetually raise funds for re-election.
You mean like the "good cause" that Colin Powell had to believe that Saddam's WMD were a threat?
I'm sorry but I can't take you seriously if you are going to insist on turning this into a political rant about the prior administration. My point was that if we had good cause to believe that North Korea was about to launch a nuclear strike on American soil (or that of any of our allies for that matter) we'd be perfectly justified in attacking them first. If you are going to question that "good cause" when it hasn't even happened because you are still bitter about the GWB administration then I think you need to step back and gain some perspective.
That would be the utmost folly, and people who think it might come to pass (because Kim Jong-Il is "mad") are IMHO victims of their own government's war propaganda.
People who think we shouldn't take steps to prepare for that possibility and to defend our citizens are delusional flower children with no concept of how the world really works. Governments don't always make logical and rational decisions. Was it rational for the Japanese to go to war with their largest trading partner whom had nine times their GDP, twice their population and the resources with which to utterly crush them? Was it logical for Argentina to start a war they couldn't win with the British? Was it logical for the Arab states to try and defeat Israel on the battlefield?
I hope to god that you are right and Kim Jong-Il is a rational man but it would be extremely stupid not to take steps to defend ourselves should he or those around him prove to be batshit insane.
But in fact the choice isn't between those two options - in fact, option B is a ludicrous scenario. The choice is actually between pissing off the rest of the world and NOT pissing off the rest of the world.
It's a ludicrous scenario right now. In a week, month or year it might not be. I'm not advocating that we attack North Korea. I'm just advocating that we prepare for the possibility and take steps (i.e: continue to invest in and deploy our missile defense system while deploying offensive assets to the Pacific that can destroy the North Korean nuclear capability should the need arise) to defend ourselves from them. Or would you rather wait until they have the capability to vaporize Los Angeles before we take steps to make it harder for them to do so?
No I don't think this is true... at least not without taking signifant losses in retalation, at least to US troops stationed in the South.
Then you don't understand how modern military campaigns are conducted or what the respective capabilities of the two forces are. In any event, the choice is between Honolulu being on the front lines and our troops in South Korea being on the front lines is not a hard one to make.
There's also another matter that neither of us have mentioned in this discussion. The fact that North Korea has a history of sharing their weapons technology with other rouge nations (Pakistan and Burma) and stateless actors. As far as I'm concerned we should ignore their bluster about "we'll consider that an act of war" and shut down the little bit of trade they have remaining with the rest of the world. If they are as rational as you seem to think they are then what do we have to lose? Surely they won't start a war they can't win over a ship being boarded, will they?
If the judge ordered Chap. 7 Darl would spend the rest of his life telling everyone how he was cheated out of his litigation fortune and chance to save the company
Except that he wouldn't be cheated out of his litigation fortune. If the litigation results in a settlement larger than the debts that SCO owes to it's creditors than the Chapter 7 wouldn't be carried to conclusion and SCO could remain in business as a viable enterprise. If the settlement is smaller than those debts than SCO wasn't going to stay in business anyway.
The US Trustee would have no interest in shutting down the litigation because whatever money SCO gains from it would be used to pay back their creditors. Thus I don't see how Darl could claim that he was "cheated" out of anything if they were forced into a Chapter 7.
The problem with Gerrymandering or redistricting is that the basic concepts behind it is real and needed. It's just that it appears to have been hijacked and given a bad name. Populations grow, people move, and so on. This presents a problem every ten years when we count the population in which one congressional district will end up disproportionally representing people over another. It's back to the old taxation without representation ordeal. If district A now has 10 times as many people and district B now has less people, then the people in A are under represented and the people in B are over represented. Changing district borders around is the way to deal with it but there is no way to do so without appearing to be acting in self interests.
Oh, I know that it's needed and that you could never precisely follow existing political lines. I would just follow them as closely as possible so that the resulting districts were drawn with the intent of keeping communities together and making sure that each district is roughly the same size in population.
When districts wind up looking like this something is wrong. That's my Congressional district. My home town (Binghamton) has nothing in common with the downstate cities that we are lumped in with. My own county winds up being divided to suit a partisan agenda because we lack the political capital to keep our community intact and you wind up seeing stupid nonsense like the thin "corridor" that stretches up to Ithaca solely so they can throw more Democrats into the district to make it impossible for Hinchey to lose re-election.
There's just something wrong when the politician gets to pick his voters. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?
I generally push the idea that it isn't the duty of our elected leaders to do what the people want. Their duty is to their office and what it covers which also covers but isn't limited to the people or what the people want.
I feel the same way, particularly with regards to the US Senate. Were it up to me we would repeal the 17th amendment.
As for the third parties. Sadly this will never be a reality because they do not want it to be. There are a few problems they refuse to tackle. One is where they main body of ideas are so similar to existing party lines that it is impossible to tell the differences except for a small few of them. Then when the major parties see the popularity of them, they simple adopt it as their own leaving the third party with no credit for the ideas. The second is that the major parties have the grass roots infrastructure in place from the local community up to the higher levels of politics. The third parties seem to not be interested in playing that role. This present a very uncomfortable view that people who are unfamiliar with the parties will not vote for them. They instead will vote for who they are comfortable with, the democrats or republicans who govern their country board or state governments. They know where the differences are with them on a local level which isn't always left and right.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I do get a kick out of political parties that can't even count one mayor of a decent sized city trying to run for President. Of course part of that is because of our electoral system and I honestly don't know how I'd do that any differently. If nothing else I'd abolish gerrymandering and draw up Congressional districts based on existing political lines (towns/cities/counties/etc), keeping them all as close together as possible in population.
At the very least that would make sure that local issues are better represented in the Congress and give us a larger number of competitive house races. You'll always have some districts (anything in NYC or San Francisco for the left, anything in the plains states/rural areas of the south for the right) that are going to tilt heavily to one side or another but drawing haphazard districts with 2 mile wide corridors that stretch across entire states in order to do it on purpose is an insult to the notion of a Representative Republic.